Dike Blair: Matinee

Blair’s painterly use of mise-en-scène evokes the influence of Edward Hopper’s cinema-inspired tableaux Published with Edward Hopper House. This volume builds on a developing body of scholarship linking the American painters Dike Blair (born 1952) and Edward Hopper (1882–1967) to each other. In both Hopper’s tableaux and Blair’s mise-en-scènes, light is a character in its own right, whether casting an eerie pallor on a desolate interior or illuminating the lip of a half-drunk glass; both artists imply narratives without offering definitive plots, inviting the viewer to stitch together a story from images and absences. Matinee foregrounds the “realism” of Blair and Hopper within the context of the utter irreality of the movies, lambent and liminal. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, organized by Helen Molesworth at the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center in Nyack, New York, this volume features a conversation between Molesworth and Blair that takes as its jumping-off point Hopper’s painting New York Movie (1939).